Trauma Memoir

The third of a nonfiction trilogy, this intrepid memoir tracks sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the life of a veteran American journalist. It also describes the long and ultimately successful psychotherapy the author undertook to heal.

It took me 37,287 words to describe the impact sexual trauma in the military has had on my life. It has taken me over 30 years to come to terms with my experience where I can now write about it and speak about it. I want to educate people about rape in the military. Perhaps I will be able to help others by sharing my experience. To keep silent just perpetuates the violence and reinforces the culture of rape that has been accepted in the military. My insight in this book will be helpful to both practitioners helping veterans and to other veterans suffering from sexual trauma as well.

In her debut book, Everybody Come Alive, Marcie Alvis Walker invites listeners into a deeply intimate and illuminating memoir comprising lyrical essays and remembrances of being a curious child of the seventies and eighties, raised under the critical and watchful eye of Jim Crow matriarchs who struggled to integrate their lives and remain whole. This is a coming-of-age journey touching on the bittersweet pain and joy of what it takes to become a person who embraces being Black, a woman, and holy in America.

Winner of the 2019 Daybreak Press Book Award for Best Non-fiction Biography/Memoir, Things That Shatter is a "superbly written... honest, gritty... page-turner will have you either nodding sagely as you recall your own experiences or making a map of what to avoid – but either way you’ll be in awe of Kaighla, her son, and their journey." In 2009, Kaighla—a young, single mother from the Midwest—converted to Islam and later met and married the Egyptian imam of a mosque in Brooklyn. Unbeknownst to her, he was still married to his first wife—who was raising their six children back home...

In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and renamed her Elizabeth. Although brought up in a ‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz. She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she come back for me? Why did she abandon me?

Ruth Clare's father came back from the Vietnam War a changed man: a violent, controlling parent and a dominating, aggressive husband. After escaping her difficult upbringing, Ruth went on to have a family of her own. Facing the challenges of parenting brought her past back to life, and she lived in fear that she was doomed to repeat her father's behaviour. Wanting to understand the experiences that had damaged her father, she met with other veterans and began listening to their stories of war, conscription and returning to civilian life.

Rose Cartwright reveals how the failure of the mental health system to cure her OCD led her to radical action. While she explored her trauma through a series of mind-bending psychedelic trips, Rose started to interrogate our dominant medical paradigm. What if people’s intense distress is not a symptom of illness, but a desperate expression of our need for love and connection? Rose set out on a quest to draw a new map of mental health, interviewing experts in psychiatry and neuroscience along the way: what she discovered will have implications for generations to come.

Surviving Lasts a Lifetime: A Parent's Journey Through Medical Trauma details the journey of a young mother who survives a near death experience against all odds. It chronicles the survival, recovery, and the difficult task of moving on, and integrating a new normal. Astrid wrote letters as a "guide to life" for her children in case she would not live to teach them to her own children, as the trauma brought into sharp focus life's great questions about love, family, and purpose.

Very few people know about the childhood trauma Kevin endured long ago in western New York. At first glance, he appears as an average engineer — with a loving wife, two amazing children, and a stable job. As Kevin digs deep into his memories, lingering doubts plague him as to whether a young girl he once knew survived the horrors — or fell to a tragic fate.

After witnessing the brutal, fatal stabbing of her mother and surviving being stabbed herself during the same attack at the age of nine, a young African-American woman’s struggle to live continues. Diamond shares the mental, physical, and emotional effects she has suffered and the challenges she has faced, including alcohol abuse, emotional detachment, suicidal thoughts and panic attacks stemming from post-traumatic stress disorders.

An irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm, with numerous side trips into the natural history of farming. Beginning naked in darkness, Brian Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field.

Drawing upon medical journals, newspapers, propaganda, military histories, and other writings of the day, Modernism, History and the First World War reads such writers as Woolf, HD, Ford, Faulkner, Kipling, and Lawrence alongside fiction and memoirs of soldiers and nurses who served in the war. This ground breaking blend of cultural history and close readings shows how modernism after 1914 emerges as a strange but important form of war writing, and was profoundly engaged with its own troubled history. Trudi Tate is a Fellow of Clare Hall and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of English,...

For 20 years Mandy had coached her clients through the turbulent waters of business and life. What she didn’t know was how important these skills would be in saving herself. On February 7, 2016, she suffered a brutal attack on her life when a college senior broke into her home in a drug-induced rage and nearly beat her to death. In this book she shares details of the attack and her journey through healing - both for herself and the man who attacked her.

One Reason to Live embodies a visceral experience of living with psychiatric injury combined with the power of radical acceptance, sweetened by the healing quality of animal companionship and the joy of embracing self-love.

Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder. After her mother's death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents' relationship. They had been unhappy for so long - should she have known that it would end like this?

With 30 years of experience as a nursing home administrator, Natalie Zeleznikar was no stranger to the strengths and limitations of health care. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, the plan was a double mastectomy and a couple months to recovery. Her reality was eight total hospitalizations in five years after nearly dying - not of cancer, but of sepsis. With a unique perspective blending the experiences of a patient and a health care worker, The Scars You Can’t See follows Natalie’s journey of struggle and survival.

A gripping true story exploring violence, mental health, and trauma, A Life for a Life follows Kevin Shird and Damion Neal, who meet as inmates in Federal Correctional Institute Allenwood. Kevin is serving time for drug trafficking, and he suffers from severe nightmares and sleep deprivation due to past traumas and copes through rigorous exercise instead of medication. He tries to guide Damion, a temperamental young man, hoping to keep him out of trouble in a dangerous environment and reunite him with his young daughter.

With aspirations of being a successful lawyer, Jonathan embarks on a path to make his dreams come true, but is ultimately, unable to do so due to his schizoaffective disorder. In this candid and unflinching memoir, Jonathan reveals his story in all its rawness: the ups, the downs, the wins, the losses, the highs and the darkest of lows.

Rheumatoid arthritis was taking over my life. I could barely walk, dress myself, and perform simple daily tasks. I did everything I could to find healing. I tried all of the special diets; I was on all of the medications. Something wasn't right, and I was just getting sicker. This audiobook is about healing from the inside out. Your body is your greatest gift, dearest friend. The only difference between having a body that is your enemy and a body that is your friend is learning to speak its language. You can overcome chronic pain! You are worthy of a great life full of health and happiness!

As a true story told through dual perspectives, a powerful love ignites amidst the chaos in a combat zone between Baghdad and Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Two young soldiers from completely different lives unite together on a deployment - mostly under the privacy of mosquito netting, since fraternization was frowned upon. Jennifer was more timid about needing to keep their relationship private, whereas Ryan didn’t take well to orders and was rather experienced in manipulating the system.